


One End and a Hundred Beginnings

by in48frames



Category: Bomb Girls
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-20
Updated: 2014-12-24
Packaged: 2018-03-02 10:43:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,368
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2809460
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/in48frames/pseuds/in48frames
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The end of the war brings with it changes no one could have predicted. Still, one change is more shocking than most.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The End of the War

**Author's Note:**

  * For [metonymy](https://archiveofourown.org/users/metonymy/gifts).



> 1) Happy happy Yuletide! I loved this assignment and wish I could have written you a novel for it, but I hope you enjoy what I put together.
> 
> 2) Because the first segment is setup that doesn't feature your requested character, I've separated it as a chapter and you can do what you like with it.
> 
> 3) I am not a doctor and my medicine is fictional at best.

When all is said and done, the war ends like one last bomb blowing the lid off the world.

In the dark of winter, the fuse is lit: with victory on the horizon, production slows and the third shift is discontinued. The ones who hold on to their jobs keep their eyes straight ahead, pretending they don't hear the fuse hissing ever closer.

It doesn't last—a lit fuse never does—and with a handful of quiet words the explosion ignites: “ _...signed the act of unconditional surrender…”_ Every person with a ticking heart streams out to fill the streets with shouts of joy, unanimous in celebration from one coast to the other.

On the surface, at least. Betty fixes an answering grin to her face and looks about at her fellow bomb girls, wondering if she could possibly be the only one with terror written plain on her heart. They change out of their coveralls and join the festivities in the street, and it doesn’t feel like the very last time.

They don’t say goodbye.

The war ends, and Kate leaves on some kind of low-budget victory tour. Though she doesn’t need to, Gladys moves into Kate’s empty room, and Betty is glad of it.

“You needn’t rush,” Gladys says, but Betty has lost her job and occupation and income in one fell swoop, and she has a mortgage to pay. More than that, she has a purpose to find. When she left the farm to join the women war workers in the city, she didn’t exactly look five years ahead and decide what she would do when the war came to an end. Put your shoulder to the wheel, sure: done. Now what?

The government offers occupational training for women war workers: housekeeping, hairdressing, waitressing. Betty stares at the image of Rosie the Riveter on the front flap of the pamphlet and wonders if good ol’ Rosie is learning how to trim hair. Is this what they worked so hard for?

She circles ads in the paper, goes from shop to shop, and hears the same thing a hundred times: “That job is waiting for someone who _fought_.” Disapproving frown. “Don’t you think you had your time in the spotlight? Our boys are home.”

 _But why?_ she cries out in the dark of her mind. _Why do they get first pass? I would have fought if they let me!_ When she drags her defeated limbs to the unemployment office, barely holding back tears of shame, the woman behind the counter looks pointedly at her left hand.

“Now that the war’s over, you see to finding a man to take care of you. Wouldn’t you much rather be at home looking after a baby instead of standing in this long line?” Encouraging smile. “You’re so young, it must feel like the war took all your best years, but don’t you worry. Keep trying. You find yourself a man.” The woman holds out the cheque but doesn’t release it until Betty nods, bent under the weight of so much expectation and shame.

She barely makes it home before the tears crash down like waves on the shore of a sea she’s never seen, and she wails again in the dark of her little house, with Gladys’s arms around her. “Why? What do they have that I don’t? I’m as good as any man, twenty men!” The words tumble out, wet and crumpled, but it’s nothing she hasn’t said before and that’s almost worse.

Of course, she goes to bed that night and gets up the next morning and starts all over again. Every day she sits down at the kitchen table and pores over the classifieds, and every week she waits in line at the unemployment office. They ask if she’s looking for work and she says yes, and she hates every minute of it.

One hundred and thirty two days after the end of the war, Betty’s unemployment cheque comes with a slip of paper bearing the address of a bakery uptown. When she calls the listed number from one of the phones the office provides, she is offered a job baking bread for forty-eight hours a week, at thirty-five cents an hour.

Her stomach plummets to the floor, and it actually physically hurts her to say she’ll take the job. She doesn’t have a choice; she knows that much, and she’s grateful when Gladys stifles her own incredulous reaction.

“D’you think they’ll send you home with the leftovers?” she asks, smiling softly, and Betty shrugs one shoulder.

“I’m not sure it would be a good thing if they did. I can’t afford to outgrow my clothes.”

Gladys pauses, and Betty can just see her cataloguing her beautiful gowns. Even if she can afford more, it would be a shame. “You have a point.”

It’s not a bad job. She leaves the house long before dawn and spends the day on her feet, punching dough harder than she ever punched a girl in a boxing ring. The scent of yeast and warm bread becomes her perfume, and she has to admit it’s better than the smell of amatol.

Still, she barely manages to scrape together enough each month to pay her mortgage, and the utilities, and the milk on top of that, and most weeks Gladys ends up bearing the brunt of the grocery shopping. Betty is too tired and beaten down even to argue.

On a Sunday morning early in December, Betty is mending the pocket of her winter coat at the kitchen table while Gladys reads the newspaper. She makes an abrupt, loud “hm!” noise and Betty looks up.

Gladys begins to read aloud. “Former Bomb Factory to House University Students. A local allied bomb factory forty minutes east of Toronto, abandoned at the end of the war, is in the process of being converted to a satellite campus for the University of Toronto. Preparing for an influx of soldiers-turned-students, the university’s St. George campus does not have the necessary capacity.

“Et cetera, et cetera…” She trails her finger down the page. “Due to the amount of renovations necessary, including the demolition of buildings contaminated by explosive materials, the facility could not be opened for the fall session, but will welcome a class of fifteen hundred in January.”

Gladys shakes out the newspaper to fold it closed, and looks up at Betty with bright eyes. “I think we’d better go have a look-see.”

“If you say so,” Betty murmurs, bending her head back over her sewing. Gladys will have her way.


	2. The Start of Something Else

On a bright blue Sunday morning in January, Betty and Gladys make the drive down Highway Two east toward Ajax. Old snow is heaped upon the fields and shoulders on either side of the road, while the pavement is dark and wet, too mild for ice. Gladys has her window cracked, the air filling her lungs with a lively energy that has her bouncing out of the car when they’ve parked behind the administration building. She does a full turn, and Betty glances about as well.

It looks like a bomb factory, all right. The administrative building is a grey block, and behind them is a long, low building of the same drab grey concrete, with a few men loitering and smoking by the main doors. Nothing much else seems to be going on, and Betty raises her eyebrows slightly at Gladys.

“Well, let’s give it a chance!” she says, leading the way to the door of the admin building. Swinging open the door, she holds it for Betty, and they shuffle in to a very typical sort of waiting room, with a receptionist’s desk, chairs around the perimeter, and several closed doors.

A few of the chairs are occupied with several men, and one of the doors is half open, a woman leaning on the knob and into the room, chatting with whoever’s inside.

The door they’re coming in through gives a little jingle, and the woman in the doorway looks back over her shoulder mid-sentence—

—

—

—

—Betty doesn’t notice her jaw dropping, or her eyes widening to the point they’re bugging out of her face—

—

—

—

—she doesn’t notice Gladys reflexively reaching out and gripping her arm—

—

—

—

—she doesn’t move as the woman across the room turns back to her conversation—

—

—

—

—she can’t feel anything but shock, the kind of shock that is like a gaping void in your chest drawing everything else in—

—

—

—

—and finally she turns to look at Gladys, to see matching shock on her face, and she shakes her head. “It isn’t—it can’t be—did you see—?”

Gladys shakes her head in turn. “I saw what you saw. Wait—”

The woman in the doorway tosses her head back, laughing at something the other person in the room has said, and then she finishes her conversation and turns back to the room, closing the door behind her—

—

—

—

—and there’s no doubt now. Her hair is darker, curled neatly under a cute peaked cap that matches her trim uniform, but as she turns to smile at the few people in the waiting room, Betty’s eyes go to her temple, where the familiar scar flexes with her facial expression.

“Hello, boys,” the woman—Vera—Vera?—says, winking at the men who stood up from their chairs as she re-entered the room, “and girls! Welcome! My name is Jane—” ( _Jane?!_ ) “—and I will be leading your tour today. If you’ll head back outside, we’re going to pile into one of the infamous Ajax green dragons.” She makes a face. “Can it be infamous if I’m the only one talking about it?” Putting one hand on her hip and cocking it, she holds her other hand up in question, and the men in the room nod eagerly, practically salivating.

 _Same old Vera_ is the thought that pops into Betty’s head, but everything in her rejects that as soon as she’s thought it. None of this makes sense.

As they turn back out the door, Gladys reaches for Betty’s hand and she takes it gratefully. They pile on and off the massive transport vehicle, following Vera—Jane?—through building after the building: the activity centre, just across the field from the admin building; the hospital, around the corner; one of the large residences, which is reminiscent of the rooming house in form if not—definitely not—in content; a cafeteria that is almost a carbon copy of the one at Vic Mu; and several lecture halls.

Betty and Gladys bring up the back of the pack at all times, always holding hands and occasionally leaning together, never hearing a word this Jane—Vera?—says. When they circle back around to the admin building, Vera—Jane?—hands out pamphlets and information sheets and offers to answer any questions they may have.

Standing off to the side, Gladys and Betty huddle together, knots in their stomachs, until the last of the men have gone and it’s just the three of them. She—Betty hasn’t the slightest idea what to call her—smiles over at them, expectant, and there’s no way to explain why they’re petrified of even stepping closer.

Finally, just as Vera—Jane?—is starting to lose interest, they shuffle over and stop in front of her, and Betty draws enough strength to say, “Vera? Vera Burr?”

For a moment, the smile remains even as her brows draw together, but it gradually drops away as she makes sense of what’s been said. Her mouth opens, closes, and then opens again. “You must...” she begins. “You... I see. You must have known... me. Before.”

Betty and Gladys exchange another look, then look back at Vera—it’s Vera, Betty can’t think of her any other way. She watches them closely for a moment, her eyes jumping from one to the other, and then she nods.

“Come along with me; we’ll sit down in the break room and have a chat.” She starts in one direction, then hesitates and looks back at them. “No one else has known me, you see,” she murmurs, almost to herself, before lowering her head and leading them through the offices to a room in the back.

It’s a small kitchenette with a coffee maker and a long table, and Betty and Gladys sit down on one side while Vera prepares the coffee. They don’t say a word, still shocked and bewildered and at a complete loss, but Betty is grateful for Gladys’s company—and ready to hear the truth.

Vera brings a tray with the coffee mugs and fixings, and sits just beside them at the end of the table without looking up from the mug she has set before her on the table. After a moment, she says, “All I know is that I woke up...”

xxx

_When she opened her eyes, they were overwhelmed with pure white light, and all she could do was blink and wait for something to make sense. In a moment, her eyes adjusted enough to process an unmarred white ceiling, travelling down to matching white walls and huge windows letting in the clouded white light of the sun._

_As her eyes moved lower, she saw a long row of white-framed beds lining the opposite wall, and a nurse standing beside her own identical bed. As she took in a fortifying breath, the nurse looked up and beamed, saying with an unfamiliar accent, “Look who’s awake!”_

Who? _she thought._ Is it me? Am I awake?

_The nurse moved closer, picking up her hand and patting it before moving her fingers to the wrist and taking a pulse. After watching the second hand on her watch, she put the hand back down and cocked her head. “How are you feeling, Jane?”_

Jane? Is that me? _She worked her throat, trying to swallow, and the nurse picked up a cup of water from the bedside table, holding a straw to Jane’s lips. Finally, she managed to say, “What happened?”_

_The nurse’s face turned grave. “You were in an accident. It was very serious, and you were lucky to survive. I’m sorry to say you’ve been unconscious for several weeks now.”_

_She couldn’t remember a thing about what happened, but that word—accident—didn’t sit well with her at all. Could this nurse have been lying to her? Why would she do that? “My name,” she said. “Jane?”_

_“Yes,” the nurse said carefully. “Does that ring a bell?”_

Not really. _She shook her head._

_Reaching back down to the bedside table, the nurse opened a drawer and reached inside. “Aside from your—” She hesitated briefly. “—clothing, this was the only personal effect you came in with. Maybe it will jog your memory.” She handed Jane a small, clear plastic bag, inside of which rested a delicate diamond ring._

_Fumbling open the bag, Jane dropped the ring into her palm, letting the bag fall onto the blanket and picking up the ring with her other hand. She studied it, turning it over in her hands, and peered at the inside of the band. There was something engraved there, and she held it up to the light to be able to read it._ Vera + Marco 1943 _, it said._

_“Who’s Vera?” she wondered aloud, the name somehow sounding marginally more familiar than the one the nurse had called her—Jane._

_“That’s a good question,” the nurse murmured._

xxx

“It took some time,” Vera says, as Betty and Gladys watch in barely restrained incredulity, “but we were able to work out that my legal name—Jane Bradshaw—was the name on record and the name under which I had been admitted. When they called looking for my next of kin—this Marco?—no one recognized the name. We were at a loss.”

xxx

_Although she had otherwise escaped with minor bumps and bruises, Vera—she had decided to use that name, at least in her own head and for the time being—required months of hospitalization and physical therapy to recover from the traumatic brain injury she had sustained. It only took two days for her to work out that the ‘accident’ story had indeed been false. The nurse hadn’t wanted to overwhelm her—the war, the sinking of her ship, the deaths of so many._

_Vera had been one of the few to survive, and yes, it hurt. She spent a lot of time sleeping, because she couldn’t do much else, but that left room for so many nightmares._

_She dreamt that she was on a sinking ship, trying desperately to escape._

_She dreamt that she was the lucky one in a lifeboat, watching her new-found friends drown in front of her._

_She dreamt of a stabbing pain in her temple, exactly the place where she had a scar she didn’t remember acquiring._

_She dreamt of watching a man die in a hospital bed._

_She dreamt of so many things that she couldn’t understand, and she wanted more than anything to be able to talk it out with someone. The nurses asked how she was, offered their kind smiles, but she couldn’t burden them with this. The doctors wanted to know where she felt pain, how dizzy she was, how much farther she was able to walk each day._

_The fact that she felt guilt for being alive, that she felt alone and out of place and upside-down and confused, she kept to herself._

xxx

Betty reaches out, laying her hand on top of Vera’s and saying quietly, “Do you want to know how you got that scar?”

Making a face, Vera shakes her head. “Unfortunately, that’s one of the few things I remember with vivid clarity.”

xxx

_When Vera was discharged from the hospital, four months after she woke up there, a nurse accompanied her in a rented car to the port. Her hospital had been in the town of Liverpool in England, way across the ocean from where she had been born—from where she had been told she had been born, in Canada._

_Although her listed next of kin, Marco Moretti, had been unreachable, the hospital had been able to find Jane Bradshaw’s family of origin, and that was where she was headed now. She wasn’t particularly thrilled about that—she didn’t have any idea what she would be walking into, but she didn’t have much idea of anything, after all._

_At the port, they left the car and walked towards the ships, the nurse carrying a small bag containing the basic necessities Vera would need for the voyage, purchased by someone Vera had never met. Walking on sensible heels, Vera kept her head held high, though dread crept up on her as the ships grew larger and larger before them._

_All it took was her heel catching on a crack in the wood, her foot rocking beneath her, and it hit like a freight train—like an actual freight train, slamming fully into her body, standing below-deck on a ship as the torpedo hit, knocked off-balance and falling to the ground as the floor tipped and everything fell, sinking, sinking—and suddenly rising, rising through the air with her arms and legs flailing, higher than she ever wanted to be, no control, and then—falling again, much faster, the searing pain of her scalp and then her entire body as she crashed to the floor—_

_—coming back into herself folded on the ground, her palms flat against the wood and her head bowed over her knees. The nurse, Vera was surprised to see, had settled herself at her side, unmindful of her clothing as she knelt on the ground, not touching her but speaking in a low voice._

_“Here we are, Miss Bradshaw, at the Port of Liverpool, perhaps a mite too close to the ocean, but still on solid ground, yes, safe on solid ground, living people all around us, nothing to fear here, Miss Bradshaw.”_

_Glancing around, Vera saw that she was quite right, and she took a deep, calming breath. “Please, call me Vera,” she said quietly._

_With a slight start, the nurse brought her eyes back up to meet Vera’s, and she smiled at the sight. “Back to yourself, then? Very good, Miss Vera. Let’s get back up on our feet.” The nurse used Vera’s bag as leverage, climbing to her feet and then reaching down to help Vera, brushing off the skirt of her dress as she rose._

_Vera took another deep breath once she was upright, then turned to the nurse. “I’m sorry, I didn’t ask for your name.”_

_“Nurse Roberts will do, Miss,” the woman said, nodding stoutly. “So. Not getting on a ship today, are you?”_

_“Perhaps not,” Vera replied with some embarrassment, “though I don’t know where else I’ll go.”_

xxx

“I let the war end without me,” Vera murmurs, staring down into her empty mug.

“I would say you sacrificed your fair share,” Gladys says matter-of-factly as she gets up to fetch back the coffeepot, and Betty nods in agreement.

“You served more than most,” she adds, but Vera just shrugs one shoulder.

xxx

 _It turned out that Nurse Roberts had a son /_ and/ _a husband serving, which meant her house was more empty than she could bear. Without much fuss, Vera moved into the spare room and began taking in sewing and laundry to help pay her way._

_Every time she threaded her needle, she heard “If you can thread a needle,” and every time she poured tea, she heard “If you can pour tea” in her head. Strange glimpses of memory, and that tug at her scalp every time._

_From the hospital, Nurse Roberts called the Bradshaw home again, to inform them that their daughter would not yet be returning. She didn’t say much about it to Vera, but the impression was that they weren’t particularly bothered; to be fair, neither was Vera. It edged more toward relief, knowing she wouldn’t have to set foot on a ship, nor give herself over to a family towards whom she had no feelings at all._

_Should she have felt guilty about that? Well, she did, anyway._

xxx

“For the record,” Betty says, “you left home for good reason. I don’t think you need feel guilty about them.”

“Well,” Vera replies.

xxx

_They crafted a family of their own, an impromptu, thrown-together sort of thing that nonetheless served needs they would otherwise have let fester. Vera’s doctors weren’t particularly interested in hearing her ramble on about nightmares and flashbacks, but Nurse Roberts drew stories out of her in the way a dentist would remove a tooth._

_Over a cup of tea after supper, she would say, “Out with it, then,” and Vera would start talking about whatever was on her mind. She had no need to fear for Nurse Roberts’ delicate sensibilities—nothing about Nurse Roberts was delicate, and anyway, she wouldn’t take no for an answer._

_In this way, they managed to move forward through the months and, then, years, as the war raged on. It wasn’t easy, not for anyone, but it /was/ endurable._

_Of course, it couldn’t last forever, and Liverpool was not Vera’s home. With no desire to try the Bradshaws again, she had only one thing to go on—this Marco, and an address in Toronto. Whoever had answered the phone when the hospital called hadn’t recognized her name, but it was worth a try. If she had no luck, Toronto had to be as close to a home as she had, hadn’t it?_

_The war ended, and ship after ship delivered Canadian and American soldiers home. Though she didn’t want to leave, she wanted less to interrupt the Robertses’ family reunion, and so it was that she found herself on a ship bound across the ocean. Nurse Roberts had introduced her to a nurse friend of hers, closer to Vera’s age, who was also returning to Canada, and they made fast friends._

_Away from Nurse Roberts’ loving but slightly domineering ways, Vera listened with rapt attention to her new friend Agatha’s tales of love in wartime. Leaning over the ship’s rail when the underdeck became too stifling, they talked of dancing with soldiers and kissing more than a few._

_Well, Agatha did, and Vera wondered what sort of girl she herself may have been at home. She spent two years in Liverpool, and she did see girls in fancy duds coming and going of a weekend evening, but she still felt so unsteady on her feet, like a foal who hadn’t quite learned to stand. Sometimes literally, since the knock to her skull had shaken up her balance, giving her dizzy spells and swirling headaches. She watched them with longing, sometimes, envying a night on the town, but what was a damaged girl to do?_

_Now, standing at the rail with Agatha and gazing out across the endless waves, she tried to imagine what sort of a life she would make for herself upon her return. It all seemed too large to take on—a whole entire life to remake and start anew. How could she do it, alone? Uncertain?_

_She wouldn’t say that aloud, to Agatha, but she did mention that she didn’t quite know what she was getting herself into._

_“Well, I know you’re aiming for Toronto,” Agatha said, “but if you need a job and a place to sleep, I’ll be taking over for a friend at the hospital in Ajax.”_

Ajax _, Vera thought, just to see if it would shake anything loose in her head, and saw a picture of a thermometer with the word beside it. Odd... “What’s in Ajax?”_

_“At the moment, a bomb factory—”_

_—heart rate speeding up, chest clenching tight, head swirling, and the vision of strange skinny cylinders rising through the air, up and away—_

_“—but they’re going to be refurbishing it to use as a university campus. They’ll need all manner of staff, if not immediately then in the next few months.”_

_Gripping the rail hard in an effort to ground herself, Vera choked out an, “Oh,” and waited for her chest to loosen, taking slow breaths in as deep as she could._

_When she felt a bit more like herself, Vera tried to think what Agatha had been saying. Something about a university in Ajax, and jobs. “I don’t have any skills, that I know of,” she said finally._

_“I imagine you can type. Either way, I think we could find you something.”_

_“That’s a relief,” Vera said, though she didn’t quite feel relieved. “Thank you.”_

xxx

As if she simply can’t hold it in anymore, Gladys bursts out with, “But did you find Marco?” She only shrugs when Betty gives her a pointed look. “I’m dying to know!” Her eagerness wanes slightly when she sees Vera’s expression in response. “Oh no.”

xxx

_A week on the ship followed by several days on the train and, finally, a shared taxi from the city to the residence in Ajax. The room waiting for Agatha would house two comfortably, and the chief of staff at the hospital graciously offered Vera a job—not the most glamourous of jobs, emptying trash cans and cleaning bed pans, but one she would gratefully accept._

_Her plan was to use her day off to travel back into the city and locate the address on her next of kin form. It was a good plan. A plan that got pushed back by one week, and then another, and then another._

_The dread only increased, though, and only would increase, so finally she bit the bullet and hitched a ride into the city, dressed in one of the new dresses she was able to buy with her new income, her hair carefully curled and wild butterflies in her stomach._

_Standing hesitantly on the doorstep, she knocked and then waited, not sure whether she wanted to actually be successful in this at all._

_The door was opened by an older woman who looked vaguely familiar to Vera—and who immediately burst into tears._

_“Ciro! Ciro! It’s Vera!” She reached out, taking Vera’s hand and drawing her into the house and into her arms, sobbing on Vera’s shoulder, her thick accent all the more obscured by her tears. “How can it be, Vera! How can this be, where have you come from, how can this be?”_

_Vera stood still, not pulling away but not reciprocating, feeling uncomfortable and burdened with guilt. When the other woman finally pulled away, and an older gentleman had joined them in the foyer (also crying), Vera said, “I’m so sorry. I don’t remember... I was injured, and I don’t remember you.”_

_That was enough to send the woman into a round of fresh tears, and by now Vera was barely holding her own emotions in check. She didn’t want to lose her composure and join the cacophony of sobbing, but she felt so very terrible she could hardly stop herself._

_Another moment later, the woman regained enough control to invite Vera into the sitting room, though she alternated sniffling and sobbing into her handkerchief. The couple left her by her lonesome on the couch while they went into the kitchen to prepare tea, and Vera could hear them speaking softly to one another, deciding what to tell her, she imagined._

_When they returned, the woman sat next to her on the couch, while the gentleman sat in an arm chair on the other side of the coffee table. The woman took Vera’s hand and stared at her for a moment, before saying, “Vera... You love our son, Marco. He gave you a ring, when you left for the war. You love each other... very much.”_

_“Where is he?” Vera said, looking from one to the other and taking in their tears again. “Is he... alive?”_

_The woman patted her hand as if in reassurance, though her continued tears undermined that gesture slightly. “He went to the war after you... died. He...”_

_Finally, Vera began to weep._

_“He came home...” the woman went on. “In body. His spirit... not so well. He left... left us, and went away again. We do not know where.”_

_With her head bent over her lap, Vera continued to weep. What could she do with that? Her hopes were dashed, but she had no closure. What could she do? Go back to Ajax, and live a replacement life; wonder forever about the life she had lost._

_What could she do?_

xxx

“So I put it out of my head,” Vera says. “When they started hiring for the university staff, I threw my name in, and here we are.”

“What exactly is your position?” Betty asks.

“Hospitality and event management,” she says, waving a hand through the air. “It sounds high-brow, but really I just plan the shindigs boys use to blow off steam, and try to keep them from getting into too much trouble. Apparently I have a knack for that sort of thing.”

“That doesn’t surprise me at all,” Gladys replies with a smirk, before turning to Betty with a more serious look.

Betty nods, feeling glum, and turns to face Vera, looking at her hands. “We... Well, we should have been there for Marco—and for his parents. If you—or they—want help looking...” She looks up and gestures between herself and Gladys. “We know the city. Or anything else. Anything you need.”

Vera smiles and looks down, and after a moment she says, “I’ve made a life here, but...” Looking up with warm wet eyes, she turns that dazzling smile on the both of them. “It feels wonderful to get in touch with my old life. Truly wonderful.”

Overwhelmed and finally coming to terms with the fact that Vera is here and is real, Betty bursts into tears and Gladys scrapes her chair closer, reaching out to take one of Betty’s hands in both of hers. Vera gets up and rounds the table, wrapping an arm around Betty and placing her other hand on Gladys’s shoulder. Shifting closer, Gladys wraps her arms around both of them, and they stay like that, grief and friendship and relief inextricably intertwined.

Whatever happens next, they’ll have each other—and it feels wonderful. Truly wonderful.


End file.
